Computing History - Sinclair ZX81 Computer Launched | Hacker News Reader

Computing History - Sinclair ZX81 Computer Launched

computinghistory.org.uk

14 pointsjedwhite17 comments

For HN Readers who care little about an obscure computer from the UK, Micro Men is an incredible movie about the people behind the 80s UK computer revolution and the chip design at the core of pretty much every modern smartphone. It's as much about the egos, the business behind it all and the race for dominance over the burgeoning home computer market as anything else, and has Martin Freeman and Alexander Armstrong in title roles.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xEV1gefvy_k

Incidentally, Acorn (who ended up getting the BBC project) went on to design their own CPU for their next generation computing lineup, a funny little chip design called the Advanced Risc Machine, or ARM, now the most use CPU design in the world.

So, in the end, the Archimedes really won ;-)

I remember an article on BYTE (badly missed) that pictured an Archimedes as capable of doing floating point math faster than a 386 with a 387 attached.

I always wanted one.

Not to mention that you could power an ARM2 by collecting the waste heat from a 386 using a thermocouple.

I don't know about the 386, but you could power a lot of stuff out of the heat of a Pentium 60.

> BYTE (badly missed)

Coming back apparently: http://technologizer.com/2010/12/22/good-grief-byte-is-comin...

I'm amazed this got to the front page. It's a terrible article about a computer that was the precursor to the computer that completely revolutionised the UK's computing industry, was father (or grandfather) to millions of British geeks and nerds, and taught a generation how to program.

Some better links for those wondering what the hell this is all about:

http://oldcomputers.net/zx81.html - Includes the pictures of the ZX81's other key use as a door stop

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZX81 - A highly informative Wikipedia article not just about the zx81 but covering some of the business end of things as well.

http://www.1up.com/features/spectraspective-history-sinclair... - A great article covering the history of the successor (the ZX Spectrum) including the ZX81.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xEV1gefvy_k - 3d Monster Maze, the great-great-great grandaddy of Doom and Wolfenstein 3d. Skip to about a minute in if you're not bothered about the loading noise.

The Register's article http://www.reghardware.com/2011/03/04/sinclair_zx81_annivers... is not bad.

> was the precursor to the computer that completely revolutionised the UK's computing industry

I may be wrong, but I always had the impression that honor belonged to the Beeb, not the Spectrum.

The Spectrum came out before the BBC Micro and was a success because it was cheap, colour and could make beepy noises. The BBC Micro was much more an educational tool. The British Government put out a list of computers that were appropriate for schools and Sinclair was furious his computers weren't on the list, so he offered schools a ridiculous deal that some took, but the majority of schools used BBC Micros because of the BBC programmes. Really it was a very bad move and many schools continued by using Acorn Archimedes computers instead of PCs even as the Internet was taking off and it was quite clear that we were facing a Windows world.

My recollection is that schools adopted the BBC, but consumers bought the Spectrum. Later on (as I recall) the C64 took an increasingly large share of the market.

Interesting. The BBC was, in many respects, very sophisticated for the time. It makes sense the simpler, cheaper, Spectrum made a larger splash in the home market.

In Brazil, the home market belonged to Apple II clones at first. Small offices split evenly between TRS-80s and IIs, with a small participation of CP/M machines. Later the home split between IIs and MSXs, losing space progressively to IBM clones. And then it all became this dull x86 world we now know.

Oh boy, is it really 30 years since we had wobbly RAM packs and Horace goes Skiing?

We had the wobbly RAM packs with the ZX80, only they were white.

A sharp quote about the ZX80: With an unusable keyboard and a quirky BASIC, this machine discouraged millions of people from ever buying another computer.

http://computermuseum.50megs.com/brands/zx80.htm

I loved that machine. Most memorable was that as you used up nearly all of the memory, the number of rows displayed on screen started to reduce.

That brought back a memory. Only instead of a wobbly RAM pack I had a tape recorder. This was about 15-20 years ago.

My first computer! Although I started programming on the Acorn Atom just before that. The combination of wobbly RAM pack and thump sensitive keyboard was not a good one. But those were exciting times.

My dad gave up on our ZX81 ever arriving and bought an Acorn Atom from an electronics guy at work.

I ended up with a Spectrum, then a BBC, then a Dell 486 and various home-builts an Macs since then.

I was slightly luckier. I had a clone with 16K of RAM and a calculator-style keyboard. Gladly, its BASIC (and, later, Microsoft's Applesoft) didn't mutilate me that much.

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